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brisingr's review against another edition
Read only the relevant parts to my thesis.
gijs's review against another edition
3.0
Ah, over 500 pages of the Bloom brontosaurus bardolator going all out on parsing the Western literary tradition, what's not to savor?; it could have been titled; The Western Canon; Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare and sorry Shakespeare epigones. But, but, but; Bloom staunchly carrying the flag of high literary esthetics as the touchstone for inclusion is admirable enough; a courageous and presciently enduring position to take up in the ongoing culture wars/woke movement; or what Bloom refers to as the ‘school of resentment’.
generalheff's review against another edition
3.0
Harold Bloom not only was a controversial critic, but one who clearly relished that label. The author, in his tome on the great authors and works of western literature, positively revels in hyperbole and antagonising his scholarly enemies, ultimately producing a searing critical tour de force but one which at times alienates even a sympathetic reader.
The central thesis of Bloom's book The Western Canon is that there is a definitive corpus of literary works that are aesthetically superior in degree and kind to all others. The concept of the aesthetic (beauty) is central to Bloom's entire book. It is the amorphous and (inevitably) undefinable stick he wields to beat his critics and foes. Who are these foes? As we discover right at the start, Bloom sees a concerted effort to overthrow the "aesthetic value" as the true measure of literature (in academia at any rate) by what he terms the "School of Resentment: Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New Historicists, Deconstructionists, Semioticians". Bloom's key issue is that these groups, in different ways, attempt to value literature in terms of "ideology, or at best ... metaphysics". Bloom, instead, states that "aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in society but as the deep self, our ultimate inwardness". In other words, for Bloom reading should be for its own sake: "To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all".
At this point of the preface we have, therefore, been categorically told what reading is and is not, as well as gaining a fairly clear view of against whom Bloom's arguments will be aimed. As I am not an academic I felt somewhat removed from all this debate but at least the early pages hooked me in (who doesn't like a good polemic?). I settled in for the ride. My overriding question as the book kicked into its discussion proper was: what are the key aesthetic features of so-called canonical literature?
Structurally, Bloom made the clever move of beginning with the "centre of the canon" and the ultimate yardstick for all others: Shakespeare. By beginning with the best, the author set out what are the integral features of the best literature. Armed with this, most of the rest of book involves utilising this Bardstick (my coinage I'm afraid, I won't use it again) to justify other authors’ inclusion in the canon.
The chapter on Shakespeare is a critical masterclass. Bloom clearly states why "Shakespeare and Dante are the center of the Canon ... they excel all other Western writers in cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention". Shakespeare is differentiated from Dante himself later on: "He perceived more than any other writer, thought more profoundly and originally than any other, and had an almost effortless mastery of language, far surpassing everyone, including Dante." The key ingredient for Bloom is Shakespeare’s "representation of character ... Sir John Falstaff is so original and so overwhelming that with him Shakespeare changes the entire meaning of what it is to have created a man made out of words". And again: "The peculiar magnificence of Shakespeare is in his power of representation of human character and personality and their mutabilities". How this is achieved in practice is best summarised in the following:
"Iago and Edmund and Hamlet contemplate themselves objectively in images wrought by their own intelligences and are enabled to see themselves as dramatic characters, aesthetic artifices. They thus become free artists of themselves, which means that they are free to write themselves, to will changes in the self. Overhearing their own speeches and pondering those expressions, they change and go on to contemplate an otherness in the self, or the possibility of such otherness."
Shakespeare creates artistically full characters, people who are so deep and realised that they could write the play themselves; Hamlet - who continually "meditates upon his own image" - literally does this of course by "revising The Murder of Gonzaga into The Mousetrap". The strength of his characters is such that they "become analytical instruments for judging you. If you are a moralist, Falstaff outrages you; if you are rancid, Rosalind exposes you; if you are dogmatic, Hamlet evades you forever. And if you are an explainer, the great Shakespearean villains will cause you to despair." Much of what seems to matter to Bloom is illustrated by how authors fall short: Chaucer's "men and women begin to develop a self-consciousness that only Shakespeare knew how to quicken into self-overhearing".
Bloom brings his views on Shakespeare together in a wonderful passage: "with Lear ... if anywhere, the flames of invention burn away all context and grant us the possibility of what could be called primal aesthetic value, free of history and ideology and available to whoever can be educated to read and view it". Disagree you might but the author’s fervour for literature is undeniably enticing. Reading Bloom on Shakespeare made me want to read the Bard through his eyes.
The following chapter is on Dante, the ‘other’ centre of the canon. Confusingly in this chapter, character seems to play a very minor role despite its overwhelming importance for Shakespeare. Instead, two other crucial concepts emerge. First is the notion of strangeness (or originality): "I have tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical. The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange." But what precisely makes Dante original is not made overly clear by Bloom though it appears to hinge on the enigmatic character of Beatrice in the Divine Comedy: "The myth of Beatrice, though it is Dante's central invention, exists only within his poetry [i.e. has no real-life analogue]. Its strangeness cannot truly be seen, because we know of no figure comparable to Beatrice." By contrasting Dante with Augustine, we are led to the conclusion that "Dante saw to it that the Comedy became no more Augustinian than it was Virgilian. It is what he desired it to be: Dantean only". Dante's originality is, I believe, not well justified by Bloom but it certainly forms a key ingredient for the critic in his quest to explain the canon.
The second ingredient for the greatest authors is the idea of a battle (‘agon’) between today’s authors and their predecessors for originality. The best authors “directly confront greatness with a total response". This response is cast in violent terms by Dr Johnson (the canonical critic): "there is indeed some tenderness due to living writers [but this is] not universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom everyone has a right to attack." Bloom certainly sees himself as taking part in a critical agon: "the tang of originality must always hover in an inaugural aspect of any work that incontestably wins the agon with tradition and joins the Canon. Our educational institutions are thronged these days by idealistic resenters who denounce competition in literature as in life, but the aesthetic and the agonistic are one".
The remainder of The Western Canon - the discussion of the other major authors - is at its best when Bloom uses the key aspects of Shakespeare and Dante (character and originality) to justify other authors' inclusion in the canon; at its worst when Bloom seems to forget what mattered for him in Shakespeare (or Dante) rendering entries seemingly arbitrary; and let down where Bloom falls into factitious academic sniping. The book is so dense that it would be impossible to cover how these three aspects of Bloom are manifested. Instead, I will pick a handful of examples to illustrate where Bloom works, where he doesn't and finish with a look at this academic internecine war Bloom so clearly wants to wage.
Many of the authors are discussed and challenged for their use of character. We hear about John Milton's "most Shakespearean of all literary characters" Satan and about "Cervantes' two heroes [who] are simply the largest literary characters in the whole Western Canon, except for their triple handful (at most) of Shakespearean peers". Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are as "multivalent as the Shakespearean: [they] contains us, with all of our severe differences from one another".
Perhaps it is in discussing Tolstoy that the importance of character and what it means for Bloom is best articulated: "Hadji Murad is the grandest exception in late Tolstoy, for here the old shaman rivals Shakespeare. Shakespeare's extraordinary faculty for endowing even the most minor characters with exuberant being, for ramming them with life, is slyly absorbed by Tolstoy. Everyone in Hadji Murad is vividly individualized ..."
Other authors are praised for their originality and strangeness. We hear about Henrik Ibsen's "verve" and "outrageous invention"; Cervantes' "heroic persistence at breaking beyond the normative boundaries of literary representation" which includes the brilliant stroke of the characters in the second part of Don Quixote having read the first part, knowing they are characters within the Don's story; and on Goethe, the "extraordinary strangeness that makes Faust the most grotesque masterpiece of Western poetry". Perhaps it is in discussing the poet Emily Dickinson that Bloom hammers home the importance of originality: "Strangeness, as I keep discovering, is one of the prime requirements for entrance into the Canon. Dickinson is as strange as Dante or Milton, who imposed their idiosyncratic visions upon us so that our scholars find them far more orthodox than they are."
When Bloom veers his key criteria is where the book can begin to totter. No more so than in the aforementioned chapter on Emily Dickinson and that on Walt Whitman. These two chapters demonstrate a tendency to overindulge in detailed analysis. We are treated to a long discussion of naming and unnaming, for example, which is somewhat baffling. The chapter on James Joyce suffers from this passion for exegesis as well. In short, a narrower focus on the key categories would have cut the book down to a better length and helped the reader truly grasp what unifies the great authors for Bloom. In discussions of Dickinson, Whitman, Joyce among others I lost the thread of why these authors deserve their place in the pantheon of literary greats.
Maybe all this could have been forgotten and forgiven as so much overexcited discussion of beloved authors were it not for Bloom's peripeteia (fatal flaw): his obsession with his academic enemies and often unpleasant dismissal of whole tranches of thought and groups of people. Early on Bloom clearly sets out his stance:
“The defense of the Western Canon is in no way a defense of the West or a nationalist enterprise … The greatest enemies of aesthetic and cognitive standards are purported defenders who blather to us about moral and political values in literature … Those who teach interpretation have more in common with the Sophists than with Socrates. What can we expect Shakespeare to do for our semiruined society, since the function of Shakespearean drama has so little to do with civic virtue or social justice? Our current New Historicists, with their odd blend of Foucault and Marx, are only a very minor episode in the endless history of Platonism. Plato hoped that by banishing the poet, he would also banish the tyrant. Banishing Shakespeare … will not rid us of our tyrants. In any case, we cannot rid ourselves of Shakespeare, or of the Canon that he centers. Shakespeare, as we like to forget, largely invented us; if you add the rest of the Canon, then Shakespeare and the Canon wholly invented us.”
This provocative passage contains all that I find odious about Bloom at his worst. There is a hysteria in Bloom that grates and becomes tedious (“semiruined society”) and a palpable anger that is tiring. I’m not sure how serious the threat of cultural readings is to Bloom’s notion of the aesthetic in literature, but throughout the book he can sound like a crazed old man railing against non-existent threats. Lastly, I find it a little stretching to claim our very selves, our capacity to think, were “invented” by the canonical authors in the quite literal manner Bloom claims both here and throughout.
Another example shows how alienating Bloom is to readers who otherwise may agree with him: “feminist cheerleaders proclaim that women writers lovingly cooperate with one another as quilt makers … as declarations by supposed literary critics, such optimistic pronouncements are neither true nor interesting and go against both human nature and the nature of imaginative literature. There can be no strong, canonical writing without the process of literary influence [i.e. an agon, conflict]”. Here is a potentially reasonable point - about the perils of ignoring the competitive in art – wrapped up in a pejorative, abusive comment about “quilt making” and the ignoring of why feminist criticism has developed: because non-male voices are missing from the canon.
Yet Bloom routinely acts as if to seek different voices in literature is to demand a dilution of aesthetic standards: “The strength of the canonical is manifested in the quiet persistence of the strongest writers. Their fecundity is endless because they represent the heart and the head rather than the loins or the privileges of caste or sect or race”. As we hear in the closing pages of the book, for Bloom “Either there were aesthetic values, or there are only the overdeterminations of race, class, and gender. You must choose, for if you believe that all value ascribed to poems or plays or novels and stories is only a mystification in the service of the ruling class, then why should you read at all rather than go forth to serve the desperate needs of the exploited classes?”
It seems utterly outrageous for him to make these Panglossian comments regarding the classless, raceless nature of his list of the best books, tinged as it surely is with context rendering them meaningful for him. Who is Bloom to say his literature is classless and should speak to all? Why can more voices not be incorporated into the pantheon of great literature if they speak to huge swathes of humanity?
I value Bloom’s attempts to demonstrate an aesthetic measure of literature in a ‘return to basics’ approach. Yet Bloom goes too far in the extent he seems to presume his literature can stand for all (it cannot) and that there is no worth to prizing new voices in the definition of great literature (there is). By undervaluing diversity Bloom ignores the importance of context and undercuts his, at times, stimulating analysis.
The central thesis of Bloom's book The Western Canon is that there is a definitive corpus of literary works that are aesthetically superior in degree and kind to all others. The concept of the aesthetic (beauty) is central to Bloom's entire book. It is the amorphous and (inevitably) undefinable stick he wields to beat his critics and foes. Who are these foes? As we discover right at the start, Bloom sees a concerted effort to overthrow the "aesthetic value" as the true measure of literature (in academia at any rate) by what he terms the "School of Resentment: Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New Historicists, Deconstructionists, Semioticians". Bloom's key issue is that these groups, in different ways, attempt to value literature in terms of "ideology, or at best ... metaphysics". Bloom, instead, states that "aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in society but as the deep self, our ultimate inwardness". In other words, for Bloom reading should be for its own sake: "To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all".
At this point of the preface we have, therefore, been categorically told what reading is and is not, as well as gaining a fairly clear view of against whom Bloom's arguments will be aimed. As I am not an academic I felt somewhat removed from all this debate but at least the early pages hooked me in (who doesn't like a good polemic?). I settled in for the ride. My overriding question as the book kicked into its discussion proper was: what are the key aesthetic features of so-called canonical literature?
Structurally, Bloom made the clever move of beginning with the "centre of the canon" and the ultimate yardstick for all others: Shakespeare. By beginning with the best, the author set out what are the integral features of the best literature. Armed with this, most of the rest of book involves utilising this Bardstick (my coinage I'm afraid, I won't use it again) to justify other authors’ inclusion in the canon.
The chapter on Shakespeare is a critical masterclass. Bloom clearly states why "Shakespeare and Dante are the center of the Canon ... they excel all other Western writers in cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention". Shakespeare is differentiated from Dante himself later on: "He perceived more than any other writer, thought more profoundly and originally than any other, and had an almost effortless mastery of language, far surpassing everyone, including Dante." The key ingredient for Bloom is Shakespeare’s "representation of character ... Sir John Falstaff is so original and so overwhelming that with him Shakespeare changes the entire meaning of what it is to have created a man made out of words". And again: "The peculiar magnificence of Shakespeare is in his power of representation of human character and personality and their mutabilities". How this is achieved in practice is best summarised in the following:
"Iago and Edmund and Hamlet contemplate themselves objectively in images wrought by their own intelligences and are enabled to see themselves as dramatic characters, aesthetic artifices. They thus become free artists of themselves, which means that they are free to write themselves, to will changes in the self. Overhearing their own speeches and pondering those expressions, they change and go on to contemplate an otherness in the self, or the possibility of such otherness."
Shakespeare creates artistically full characters, people who are so deep and realised that they could write the play themselves; Hamlet - who continually "meditates upon his own image" - literally does this of course by "revising The Murder of Gonzaga into The Mousetrap". The strength of his characters is such that they "become analytical instruments for judging you. If you are a moralist, Falstaff outrages you; if you are rancid, Rosalind exposes you; if you are dogmatic, Hamlet evades you forever. And if you are an explainer, the great Shakespearean villains will cause you to despair." Much of what seems to matter to Bloom is illustrated by how authors fall short: Chaucer's "men and women begin to develop a self-consciousness that only Shakespeare knew how to quicken into self-overhearing".
Bloom brings his views on Shakespeare together in a wonderful passage: "with Lear ... if anywhere, the flames of invention burn away all context and grant us the possibility of what could be called primal aesthetic value, free of history and ideology and available to whoever can be educated to read and view it". Disagree you might but the author’s fervour for literature is undeniably enticing. Reading Bloom on Shakespeare made me want to read the Bard through his eyes.
The following chapter is on Dante, the ‘other’ centre of the canon. Confusingly in this chapter, character seems to play a very minor role despite its overwhelming importance for Shakespeare. Instead, two other crucial concepts emerge. First is the notion of strangeness (or originality): "I have tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical. The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange." But what precisely makes Dante original is not made overly clear by Bloom though it appears to hinge on the enigmatic character of Beatrice in the Divine Comedy: "The myth of Beatrice, though it is Dante's central invention, exists only within his poetry [i.e. has no real-life analogue]. Its strangeness cannot truly be seen, because we know of no figure comparable to Beatrice." By contrasting Dante with Augustine, we are led to the conclusion that "Dante saw to it that the Comedy became no more Augustinian than it was Virgilian. It is what he desired it to be: Dantean only". Dante's originality is, I believe, not well justified by Bloom but it certainly forms a key ingredient for the critic in his quest to explain the canon.
The second ingredient for the greatest authors is the idea of a battle (‘agon’) between today’s authors and their predecessors for originality. The best authors “directly confront greatness with a total response". This response is cast in violent terms by Dr Johnson (the canonical critic): "there is indeed some tenderness due to living writers [but this is] not universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom everyone has a right to attack." Bloom certainly sees himself as taking part in a critical agon: "the tang of originality must always hover in an inaugural aspect of any work that incontestably wins the agon with tradition and joins the Canon. Our educational institutions are thronged these days by idealistic resenters who denounce competition in literature as in life, but the aesthetic and the agonistic are one".
The remainder of The Western Canon - the discussion of the other major authors - is at its best when Bloom uses the key aspects of Shakespeare and Dante (character and originality) to justify other authors' inclusion in the canon; at its worst when Bloom seems to forget what mattered for him in Shakespeare (or Dante) rendering entries seemingly arbitrary; and let down where Bloom falls into factitious academic sniping. The book is so dense that it would be impossible to cover how these three aspects of Bloom are manifested. Instead, I will pick a handful of examples to illustrate where Bloom works, where he doesn't and finish with a look at this academic internecine war Bloom so clearly wants to wage.
Many of the authors are discussed and challenged for their use of character. We hear about John Milton's "most Shakespearean of all literary characters" Satan and about "Cervantes' two heroes [who] are simply the largest literary characters in the whole Western Canon, except for their triple handful (at most) of Shakespearean peers". Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are as "multivalent as the Shakespearean: [they] contains us, with all of our severe differences from one another".
Perhaps it is in discussing Tolstoy that the importance of character and what it means for Bloom is best articulated: "Hadji Murad is the grandest exception in late Tolstoy, for here the old shaman rivals Shakespeare. Shakespeare's extraordinary faculty for endowing even the most minor characters with exuberant being, for ramming them with life, is slyly absorbed by Tolstoy. Everyone in Hadji Murad is vividly individualized ..."
Other authors are praised for their originality and strangeness. We hear about Henrik Ibsen's "verve" and "outrageous invention"; Cervantes' "heroic persistence at breaking beyond the normative boundaries of literary representation" which includes the brilliant stroke of the characters in the second part of Don Quixote having read the first part, knowing they are characters within the Don's story; and on Goethe, the "extraordinary strangeness that makes Faust the most grotesque masterpiece of Western poetry". Perhaps it is in discussing the poet Emily Dickinson that Bloom hammers home the importance of originality: "Strangeness, as I keep discovering, is one of the prime requirements for entrance into the Canon. Dickinson is as strange as Dante or Milton, who imposed their idiosyncratic visions upon us so that our scholars find them far more orthodox than they are."
When Bloom veers his key criteria is where the book can begin to totter. No more so than in the aforementioned chapter on Emily Dickinson and that on Walt Whitman. These two chapters demonstrate a tendency to overindulge in detailed analysis. We are treated to a long discussion of naming and unnaming, for example, which is somewhat baffling. The chapter on James Joyce suffers from this passion for exegesis as well. In short, a narrower focus on the key categories would have cut the book down to a better length and helped the reader truly grasp what unifies the great authors for Bloom. In discussions of Dickinson, Whitman, Joyce among others I lost the thread of why these authors deserve their place in the pantheon of literary greats.
Maybe all this could have been forgotten and forgiven as so much overexcited discussion of beloved authors were it not for Bloom's peripeteia (fatal flaw): his obsession with his academic enemies and often unpleasant dismissal of whole tranches of thought and groups of people. Early on Bloom clearly sets out his stance:
“The defense of the Western Canon is in no way a defense of the West or a nationalist enterprise … The greatest enemies of aesthetic and cognitive standards are purported defenders who blather to us about moral and political values in literature … Those who teach interpretation have more in common with the Sophists than with Socrates. What can we expect Shakespeare to do for our semiruined society, since the function of Shakespearean drama has so little to do with civic virtue or social justice? Our current New Historicists, with their odd blend of Foucault and Marx, are only a very minor episode in the endless history of Platonism. Plato hoped that by banishing the poet, he would also banish the tyrant. Banishing Shakespeare … will not rid us of our tyrants. In any case, we cannot rid ourselves of Shakespeare, or of the Canon that he centers. Shakespeare, as we like to forget, largely invented us; if you add the rest of the Canon, then Shakespeare and the Canon wholly invented us.”
This provocative passage contains all that I find odious about Bloom at his worst. There is a hysteria in Bloom that grates and becomes tedious (“semiruined society”) and a palpable anger that is tiring. I’m not sure how serious the threat of cultural readings is to Bloom’s notion of the aesthetic in literature, but throughout the book he can sound like a crazed old man railing against non-existent threats. Lastly, I find it a little stretching to claim our very selves, our capacity to think, were “invented” by the canonical authors in the quite literal manner Bloom claims both here and throughout.
Another example shows how alienating Bloom is to readers who otherwise may agree with him: “feminist cheerleaders proclaim that women writers lovingly cooperate with one another as quilt makers … as declarations by supposed literary critics, such optimistic pronouncements are neither true nor interesting and go against both human nature and the nature of imaginative literature. There can be no strong, canonical writing without the process of literary influence [i.e. an agon, conflict]”. Here is a potentially reasonable point - about the perils of ignoring the competitive in art – wrapped up in a pejorative, abusive comment about “quilt making” and the ignoring of why feminist criticism has developed: because non-male voices are missing from the canon.
Yet Bloom routinely acts as if to seek different voices in literature is to demand a dilution of aesthetic standards: “The strength of the canonical is manifested in the quiet persistence of the strongest writers. Their fecundity is endless because they represent the heart and the head rather than the loins or the privileges of caste or sect or race”. As we hear in the closing pages of the book, for Bloom “Either there were aesthetic values, or there are only the overdeterminations of race, class, and gender. You must choose, for if you believe that all value ascribed to poems or plays or novels and stories is only a mystification in the service of the ruling class, then why should you read at all rather than go forth to serve the desperate needs of the exploited classes?”
It seems utterly outrageous for him to make these Panglossian comments regarding the classless, raceless nature of his list of the best books, tinged as it surely is with context rendering them meaningful for him. Who is Bloom to say his literature is classless and should speak to all? Why can more voices not be incorporated into the pantheon of great literature if they speak to huge swathes of humanity?
I value Bloom’s attempts to demonstrate an aesthetic measure of literature in a ‘return to basics’ approach. Yet Bloom goes too far in the extent he seems to presume his literature can stand for all (it cannot) and that there is no worth to prizing new voices in the definition of great literature (there is). By undervaluing diversity Bloom ignores the importance of context and undercuts his, at times, stimulating analysis.
starthistle1's review against another edition
2.0
It's not all bad.
There's some great stuff in here, but it is too often drowned out by Bloom's incessant sniping at the supposed wicked Marxist-Feminist-Christian-Minority Voice critical-industrial-complex of the so-called "School of Resentment." He makes compelling points in favor of the aesthetic value of literature, but never demonstrates that or why this should be considered superior to the "School of Resentment"'s perspective, a perspective which (insofar as it actually exists) seems more interested in whether the literature makes true or insightful statements. In Bloom's vision of these modern critical theories, I am reminded strongly of C.S. Lewis' arguments in An Experiment in Criticism or in The Abolition of Man that this question of whether or not a work makes true statements about reality is more important than its aesthetic value alone.
More accurately, perhaps, it is not novel to place "politics" over aesthetics—Lewis bemoaned prioritizing aesthetics over Truth. In many respects the past was the same, but the politics were then those of Empire, now of whichever ideology/ies) predominate/s in the academy.
Bloom insists on recognizing aesthetic value when he sees it—but this is then entirely arbitrary. I trust his expertise and what he sees in a work—but I am in no way obligated to agree, nor do I find that "newer canons" of the "School of Resentment" somehow exclude the above. His rejection of Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and others seems deeply arbitrary here. Bloom is facially correct in claiming that a work is not good simply because it is written by the oppressed-but this is clearly a strawman of his opponents.
If you're interested in Bloom's arguments on the canon, the introduction is excellent for this, particularly p. 22-24 in the edition I read. For more on the aesthetic value-and the reasons why Bloom rejects certain forms of Great Books curricula, see p. 28. If you're interested more in his critical analysis of specific major works (the best part of the book), his insights are generally good if you're prepared to roll your eyes on occasion (on frequent occasion) when he rants about Marxist-Feminist-Christian-Minority Voice scholars.
Bloom's elegy for the canon seems ultimately misplaced. The momentary acceptance of bad art in the academy shouldn't really have concerned Bloom greatly—for if the canon is ultimately based on aesthetic value and influence as he believes, then it will endure. The canon-such as it even exists-seems more likely to ultimately be broadened than to be abrogated.
There's some great stuff in here, but it is too often drowned out by Bloom's incessant sniping at the supposed wicked Marxist-Feminist-Christian-Minority Voice critical-industrial-complex of the so-called "School of Resentment." He makes compelling points in favor of the aesthetic value of literature, but never demonstrates that or why this should be considered superior to the "School of Resentment"'s perspective, a perspective which (insofar as it actually exists) seems more interested in whether the literature makes true or insightful statements. In Bloom's vision of these modern critical theories, I am reminded strongly of C.S. Lewis' arguments in An Experiment in Criticism or in The Abolition of Man that this question of whether or not a work makes true statements about reality is more important than its aesthetic value alone.
More accurately, perhaps, it is not novel to place "politics" over aesthetics—Lewis bemoaned prioritizing aesthetics over Truth. In many respects the past was the same, but the politics were then those of Empire, now of whichever ideology/ies) predominate/s in the academy.
Bloom insists on recognizing aesthetic value when he sees it—but this is then entirely arbitrary. I trust his expertise and what he sees in a work—but I am in no way obligated to agree, nor do I find that "newer canons" of the "School of Resentment" somehow exclude the above. His rejection of Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and others seems deeply arbitrary here. Bloom is facially correct in claiming that a work is not good simply because it is written by the oppressed-but this is clearly a strawman of his opponents.
If you're interested in Bloom's arguments on the canon, the introduction is excellent for this, particularly p. 22-24 in the edition I read. For more on the aesthetic value-and the reasons why Bloom rejects certain forms of Great Books curricula, see p. 28. If you're interested more in his critical analysis of specific major works (the best part of the book), his insights are generally good if you're prepared to roll your eyes on occasion (on frequent occasion) when he rants about Marxist-Feminist-Christian-Minority Voice scholars.
Bloom's elegy for the canon seems ultimately misplaced. The momentary acceptance of bad art in the academy shouldn't really have concerned Bloom greatly—for if the canon is ultimately based on aesthetic value and influence as he believes, then it will endure. The canon-such as it even exists-seems more likely to ultimately be broadened than to be abrogated.
fattoush's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
ckehoe79's review against another edition
5.0
Brilliant but difficult
I loved the thoroughness of the discussion of literature. I personally felt inadequate in so far as my knowledge of canonical literature is lacking. That made it difficult to read and understand, but I'm glad I read it. It makes one want to read the greats of all time and then some, adding to one's knowledge of the vastness of humanity. Highly recommended.
I loved the thoroughness of the discussion of literature. I personally felt inadequate in so far as my knowledge of canonical literature is lacking. That made it difficult to read and understand, but I'm glad I read it. It makes one want to read the greats of all time and then some, adding to one's knowledge of the vastness of humanity. Highly recommended.
holodoxa's review against another edition
5.0
Harold Bloom, the paradoxically exuberant literary curmudgeon, delivers one of the most important and accessible works of literary criticism on the titular subject. Part reclamation project, part elegy, part devastating diatribe, and part erudite literary analysis, Bloom takes an aggressive stance on the literature that is central to the The Western Canon: Shakespeare, Dante, and their eminent progeny (with nods for literary forebears in the epic/poetic tradition).
The breadth, depth, and erudition alone warrant the read. It is, of course, challenging, especially if you are unfamiliar with many of the texts discussed, which is almost assuredly an inevitability for most readers and partly due to Bloom's preference for verse. But Bloom may be one of the most prolific readers in human history and this is paired with his capacious memory. The exposure to his mind that The Western Canon affords is wonderful.
Bloom's argument for canonicity is a little slippery (he acknowledges this) essentially boiling down to aesthetic (i.e. sublimity/transcendence) and psychological (i.e. character) innovation with enduring influence. He eschews attaching value to literature on the basis of moral value, social progress, or other consideration beyond the text, asserting reading high literature is an elitist activity in its essence. Hence his grudge with multiculturalists and critics from the "School of Resentment," which includes Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New Historicists, Deconstructionists, and Semioticians. His critique of the School of Resentment is exemplary and unfortunately incredibly prescient.
The Western Canon's thesis isn't perfect as no literary theory even is. I wish Bloom spent more time specifying the premises supporting the parameters of canonicity and the technical details that contribute to achieving canonicity. Apart from a few scattered places in the book (usually concerning Shakespeare's work), Bloom is mostly gesturing or intimating a visceral understanding of what comprises the nuts and bolts of canonical literature.
I think Bloom's Western Canon should be forgiven this shortcoming as Bloom's case for reading and re-reading great literature and what makes great literature is more persuasive than the seemingly all other literary theories even if it's deeply subjective and idiosyncratic. It is a tragedy of sorts that the institutional study of literature has not heeded Bloom. Nearly thirty years later, it does appear that this work was indeed an elegy.
The breadth, depth, and erudition alone warrant the read. It is, of course, challenging, especially if you are unfamiliar with many of the texts discussed, which is almost assuredly an inevitability for most readers and partly due to Bloom's preference for verse. But Bloom may be one of the most prolific readers in human history and this is paired with his capacious memory. The exposure to his mind that The Western Canon affords is wonderful.
Bloom's argument for canonicity is a little slippery (he acknowledges this) essentially boiling down to aesthetic (i.e. sublimity/transcendence) and psychological (i.e. character) innovation with enduring influence. He eschews attaching value to literature on the basis of moral value, social progress, or other consideration beyond the text, asserting reading high literature is an elitist activity in its essence. Hence his grudge with multiculturalists and critics from the "School of Resentment," which includes Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New Historicists, Deconstructionists, and Semioticians. His critique of the School of Resentment is exemplary and unfortunately incredibly prescient.
The Western Canon's thesis isn't perfect as no literary theory even is. I wish Bloom spent more time specifying the premises supporting the parameters of canonicity and the technical details that contribute to achieving canonicity. Apart from a few scattered places in the book (usually concerning Shakespeare's work), Bloom is mostly gesturing or intimating a visceral understanding of what comprises the nuts and bolts of canonical literature.
I think Bloom's Western Canon should be forgiven this shortcoming as Bloom's case for reading and re-reading great literature and what makes great literature is more persuasive than the seemingly all other literary theories even if it's deeply subjective and idiosyncratic. It is a tragedy of sorts that the institutional study of literature has not heeded Bloom. Nearly thirty years later, it does appear that this work was indeed an elegy.
extragravy's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed hearing him talk about books. I don't agree with everything but its nice to spend time with a smart well read person communicating their thoughts.